An Analysis of the Impact of Environmental Initiatives and Measures on Socioeconomics in New York City

Introduction

New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, whether in terms of culture, income, or background. Being one of the largest and most significant cities on the globe, it also is full of organizations, groups and initiatives creating change in new and exciting ways. With the increased emphasis on sustainable solutions and environmental awareness over the recent decades, New York is one of many cities making constant changes at both a government and local community level when it comes to sustainability. This project aims to take a look at the numerous initiatives, changes, and measures in the field of sustainability and the built environment and analyze how they impact and interact with the socioeconomic makeup of the city.

Background

New York City is divided into 5 immensely diverse boroughs, each with significant differences in history, culture, and residents. The city is divided further into Community Districts (or Neighborhoods) which give a zoomed in look at the different communities within the city. Some neighborhoods such as East Harlem or Greenwich Village/Soho are etched in media and culture. Some such as Williamsburg are known as up-and-coming neighborhoods defining the new era of the city. Each neighborhood comes with its own stories – and stereotypes – which this project hopes to further unpack. For this reason, the project will often use both these community districts and the boroughs when analyzing the socioeconomic and environmental differences within the city.

Boroughs of New York City

Before diving into the different measures of sustainability, we began by performing an analysis of socioeconomic measures within the city. We chose to focus on race and poverty within the city and its districts. We began by mapping concentrated poverty by community district. Concentrated poverty is a measure which denotes areas with high levels of poverty (30% or more). Therefore, a district with a high proportion of concentrated poverty has large or numerous areas with high levels of residents in poverty.

Looking at the results of the map, two or three areas of the city emerge with high levels of poverty. The northern districts of Brooklyn such as Bedford/Stuyvesant (will often be referred to as Bed-Stuy), Brownsville, and Williamsburg/Greenpoint (will often be referred to as Williamsburg), the Bronx, and East Harlem can all be seen to have elevated levels of concentrated poverty.

We also chose to map the poverty data in 2010 to better contextualize the changes in these demographics over the time frame we will be looking at. Interestingly, the greatest changes in poverty seem to be in these same areas highlighted for having high poverty levels in 2020. Areas like Williamsburg, Bed-Stuy, and the Bronx were still among the highest in concentrated poverty, but by an even more drastic amount. This shows us that these poorer areas are improving significantly over time with respect to this measure of poverty. This reasonings for this will be explored throughout the project and are of great significance.

We then chose to map the population proportions of difference races within the city. This was not only for contextual purposes but also to see how closely these demographic differences are tied to poverty levels within the city.

After mapping this data, it can clearly be seen that there does tend to be higher proportions of minority populations, specifically Black and Hispanic populations within the community districts with high levels of poverty. The reasons for this are vast and cannot be fully explored at the moment, but it is important to recognize they exist and how race and poverty, and community are connected within the scope of New York City.

Introducing the Environmental Element

With this basic understanding of racial and economic distribution throughout the districts, we wanted to explore the element of sustainability and environmental initiatives and measures to learn how they interact with the socioeconomic factors. Some of the immediate questions that inspired this exploration were those such as ‘Do different races have equal access to sustainable infrastructure?’ and ‘How do these initiatives impact property values and wealth within a district?’ This project is not going to focus as much on what environmental initiatives were put in place or how initiatives were put into action but rather both the positive and negative benefits these initiatives and measures can have on a community from a socioeconomic standpoint.

Exploring the Positive Impacts of Sustainable Initiatives

There are clearly numerous positive impacts of sustainable initiatives. One does not have to look much further than a measure such as air quality to see how initiatives can have valuable health and lifestyle impacts citywide. Strict state-led programs to cut pollution have seen clear benefits across the city.

Further analyzing where these strides have been made and where particle content (low air quality) is highest, one can see that for the most part, it is concentrated around Brooklyn and Manhattan. Centers of lower air quality shifted to now include much of Northwest Brooklyn and the Bronx, potentially showing disproportionate improvements over the 10-year process. While it is certainly not enough to claim that these initiatives were less effective in these lower income neighborhoods, it is a good introduction to how the clear positive benefits of sustainable solutions can often be more complex when analyzed in more specific contexts.

We also took a look at Green infrastructure and its growing role within the city. The New York City Environmental protection department has been rapidly documenting and developing green infrastructure projects and features throughout the city. Green Infrastructure can take many forms and is defined as infrastructure which plays a role in managing and filtering rainfall and storm water. It has numerous benefits in keeping a community safe and clean by filtering out things like bacteria, trash, metals and pollutants from the water. It also provides benefits of mitigating flooding risks, which is extremely valuable for potentially low income and susceptible areas. We wanted to investigate if these kinds of benefits are available across the city or are there certain areas where this infrastructure is less developed.

This revealed a heavy concentration of green infrastructure projects in the Brooklyn and Queens areas of the city. We also chose to see the progress of all projects to see where new projects are being developed and submitted for development. Many of the projects currently under review and development are in the Brooklyn area in many of the same neighborhoods we highlighted in earlier parts of the project. This is great for many reasons. Seeing the New York City Environmental Protection agency deliver on their goal of equal access to this type of infrastructure and their emphasis on diversity is significant. In fact, sustainable development is often developed with these specifics in mind. The three pillars of sustainability are often cited as social, economic, and environmental, whereas many only think of the environmental aspect when they hear the word. However, it should also be noted that the same density of projects does not seem to be present - or even planned - in the more impoverished areas of the Bronx.

We also took a look at Community Gardens to highlight another important aspect of sustainability. While many of the benefits are clear such as providing fresh, healthy produce to an area, providing green spaces, and cleaning up the environment, the community garden introduces a unique social benefit. Community gardens provide spaces for people of the community to interact and develop organic connections. They provide spaces for gathering as well as products of value, especially in poorer areas. Especially in dense, urban areas like New York City, they provide a unique and accessible space. But are they truly accessible to everyone? And are they providing trendy, surface-level value or are they in places where they are truly utilized? Using a heatmap, we found out.

Heatmap of community gardens in New York City

More than any other sustainable initiative, there is extremely clear connection between the areas of poverty and areas with high counts of community gardens. Specifically in Brooklyn and the Bronx, there are heavy concentrations of gardens, showing that these initiatives do often rise out of a place of service and benefit for these communities. Furthermore, one can visit the GrowNYC website to see the outreach and education these programs and gardens provide for communities, as well as their commitment to sustainability.

Taking a Deeper Look

As we explored the data and learned more about the impacts of sustainability on communities however, we became aware of another trend. One of the most prevalent issues in many American cities is that of gentrification. As Americans, especially younger, white Americans desire to live closer to city centers, they flock to more affordable areas of the city. As property values in these areas increase and investment in attractive, up-and-coming areas rises, the lower income tenants that resided in those areas historically are forced to more out. In many cases, these residents are minorities and have created a culture and community in these areas that is being washed over by these new residents. We wanted to see where this was happening in the city and if it coincided with some of the hotspots of sustainable initiatives explored earlier in the project.

A quick analysis of changes in household income based on boroughs suggest that Brooklyn is by far the area with the greatest changes in income and a quick search confirms that Brooklyn is known for facing a significant gentrification problem. Incomes and property costs are rising rapidly while diversity in these districts are often on the decline. We took a look at some of the districts with the highest changes in poverty and looked further into the data for these districts.

Once again, even on a neighborhood level it is clear that districts such as Bed-Stuy and Williamsburg have seen significant changes in income levels over the past 20 years, even when compared to the Bronx which also saw improvements in poverty. This is because these areas saw significant levels of gentrification. Compare this to boroughs that did not see changes in poverty and it can be seen that the income levels are much more stable. Below is a graph for a district in Staten Island.

To further prove this trend of gentrification, we also took a look at rent prices in these highlighted districts and saw even more drastic results.

The Brooklyn neighborhoods Bed-Stuy and Williamsburg saw dramatic increases in rent prices over the period, with Williamsburg especially seeing a drastic increase. Meanwhile, the Staten Island neighborhood (South Beach) stayed relatively stable and the Bronx district (Mott Haven/Melrose) saw slight increases as well. Both Brooklyn neighborhoods started below South Beach at the start of the period and ended above it by the end. This is especially interesting considering the concentrated poverty data from earlier and how even in 2020, these neighborhoods saw higher levels of poverty than Staten Island. This is a clear sign of the process of Gentrification. The conversion of some areas of the neighborhood into luxury, expensive (and often whiter) communities and shops while other parts of the neighborhood remain poor and often ignored. Nowhere is this more clear than the neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

Interestingly enough, this is where much of the sustainable development we discussed earlier occurred. In fact, Bed-Stuy had the highest number of community gardens proportional to its population. These areas were also where much of the green infrastructure development was occurring. Now the significant number of planned sustainable projects in these north Brooklyn neighborhoods has more context. This reveals the complex reality of many sustainable projects and initiatives. They often can have unintended impacts on property values and communities, leading to the issues such as gentrification and all the problems that come along with it. While these initiatives have significant positive impacts, as discussed in these reports, these positive impacts often come at a cost at some point. Many times, those paying for the cost are impoverished and minority tenants as neighborhoods become safer, greener, and pricier.

Clearly this is a complex issue. By every metric, we want greener, safer, more walkable communities and cities. The issue arises when the original residents get forced out, just moving the poverty to some other area rather than addressing it. Furthermore, as wealthy, young, and often white Americans move in, much of the original community structure and culture is lost. Solving a problem like this is an issue far beyond the scope of this report but understanding how sustainable initiatives and projects can play a role in this an important part of looking at their impacts.

What Does This Mean? What is Environmental Injustice?

One example of this is already exists as one of New York’s biggest symbols. The High Line is an urban park within New York City that travels throughout the Chelsea neighborhood and surrounding areas. Once a railroad within the meatpacking district, it was originally set to be demolished, as the area had become dirty and run down after many of the meatpacking companies left and the train stopped running on those tracks. However, a group of activists pushed for the old railroad to be turned into a green, sustainable urban park, allowing the public to walk above the city and enjoy New York and greenery at the same time. This change became a major catalyst for the neighborhood, as the High Line became an extremely popular destination. Hip bars and restaurants came in, rent skyrocketed, and now Chelsea is one of the most popular and expensive areas in the city.

Below is a graph charting Chelsea home unit prices in 2000, 2006, 2010, 2019 and 2020. Note the data has a drastic drop in some respects between 2006 and 2010 because of the 2008 Financial Housing Crisis. However, it is clear that the High Line, whose first section was opened in 2009 preceded a time of extremely significant growth in housing prices in the neighborhood.

To this day the High Line remains an extremely popular spot in the city for tourists and residents alike. But of course, the meatpackers and their families were forced to move out, leaving the neighborhood they and their family members before them built. The High Line, while a symbol for New York in many ways, is also often seen as a symbol of Gentrification and ‘Environmental Injustice’. This same thing is happening across the city, in different phases along the same path. Chelsea is an example of the ‘final product’, an uber-rich neighborhood with business offices of some of the biggest companies in the world and some of New York’s most popular destinations. Brooklyn is in the transition phase, as places that were considered poor or dangerous just 10 years ago are rapidly becoming hotspots for young people. Even areas like the Bronx are showing signs of early change. Once again, in many ways these changes are great. But these issues are often complex, and with progress comes costs. It is important to understand how seemingly overwhelmingly positive environmental initiatives can have additional, unintentional effects over time as we create sustainable solutions for an ever-developing world.